When Man Once
More Reappears He Seems To Have Been Re-Created On Somewhat
Different Lines.
It is this break in the history of the human race which amazes
and daunts us, which "shadows forth the heartless voids and
immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind
with the thought of annihilation."
Here, in these words of Hermann Melville, we are let all at
once into the true meaning of those disquieting and seemingly
indefinable emotions so often experienced, even by the most
ardent lovers of nature and of solitude, in uninhabited
deserts, on great mountains, and on the sea. We find here the
origin of that horror of mountains which was so common until
recent times. A friend once confessed to me that he was
always profoundly unhappy at sea during long voyages, and the
reason was that his sustaining belief in a superintending
Power and in immortality left him when he was on that waste of
waters, which have no human associations. The feeling, so
intense in his case, is known to most if not all of us; but we
feel it faintly as a disquieting element in nature of which we
may be but vaguely conscious.
Most travelled Englishmen who have seen much of the world and
resided for long or short periods in many widely separated
countries would probably agree that there is a vast difference
in the feeling of strangeness, or want of harmony with our
surroundings, experienced in old and in new countries.
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